La Jornada: Humbling experience, space flights and watching the world spin: Wilmore

“Who hasn’t dreamed of the stars and of going to space? We’ve all dreamed of that, and so have I; of that and many other things,” said Barry Wilmore, retired astronaut from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), veteran of the International Space Station, with 464 days accumulated in space over three missions.

This is how his meeting with students from the National Polytechnic Institute began, who for an hour and 15 minutes did not stop recording him with their cell phones while the astronaut recounted the demanding training he received, the physical demands of living outside of Earth and the most dazzling aspects of the universe.

“Space flights, watching the world rotate at about 28 kilometers per second through the window, is a humbling experience,” said Wilmore, for whom everything we are comes from space. “What makes comets comets? What gives us the ability to witness life on this planet? Many questions arise,” he stressed to young people interested in answers.

Wilmore first traveled to space in 2009 aboard the shuttle Atlantis. In 2014, he returned to the International Space Station on the spacecraft Soyuzwhere he first served as a flight engineer and then assumed command of the station.

A decade later, in 2024, he returned to the Space Station aboard the Starliner from Boeing and returned to Earth in 2025 in a spacecraft Dragon of SpaceX, after NASA decided to return the Starliner uncrewed.

In interview with The DayWilmore said that during his time in space his body underwent physical changes, “in space the blood is redistributed; the body interprets that it has too much and begins to eliminate part of it, so one returns to Earth in an anemic state.”

In the silence and vastness of space, he tried to focus on the things he couldn’t do on Earth. “There are people with you, you put on music and you start to enjoy the extraordinary experience of being up there.”

Wilmore earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and a minor in aviation systems from Tennessee University of Technology. Before being selected by NASA, he was a naval aviator in the United States Air Force.

One of the most memorable moments of the talk occurred when Wilmore projected an image released in April of this year in the context of the Artemis II mission, in which the back side of the Moon was observed with the Earth in the background.

“How many times have I heard reporters on television say ‘the dark side of the Moon’?” he commented, and immediately explained that the term is incorrect, since it is not a permanently dark region. “It is not the dark side of the Moon, but the back side of it.”

He explained that, due to the gravitational interaction between the Earth and the Moon, the satellite always maintains the same side facing our planet while it orbits around it. The back side also receives sunlight, although it cannot be observed directly from Earth.

During the talk, the astronaut also talked about NASA’s project to return to the Moon through the Artemis program, with the aim of establishing a sustained human presence on the lunar surface and preparing future missions to Mars. Furthermore, he mentioned the mission Psychewhich studies an asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter, considered a window to understand the formation of planets.

Wilmore, who retired from NASA in July 2025, after 25 years at the agency, called on young people to perform with excellence. “Everything you do today has implications for what you will do later. You, too, can feel the awe, when you reach the place you have dreamed of. Pursue excellence.”